Image: Original photograph by Becker1999/Flickr
Facebook takes sides on COVID-19 protests

Good morning! This Tuesday, California taps big tech to help bridge the digital divide, Facebook takes on the protestors taking on social distancing, and Alibaba throws billions into the cloud wars.
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Andrew Yang has some thoughts on that Marc Andreessen essay we mentioned Monday:
The FCC opted not to extend the window for cities and first responders to comment on net neutrality, and Jessica Rosenworcel doesn't like it:
John Martinis, the creator of Google's quantum hardware group, said he left the company after being dumped into an advisory role:
According to the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, about 20% of California students don't have high-speed internet or a computer at home. More than 40% said they don't have "the laptop, Chromebook, or tablet needed to access distance learning."
Yesterday, Newsom announced a huge set of donations — money, equipment, services and more — from companies all over the country.
In all, 70,000 students will receive devices. These gifts are great and important, but they're only part of the plan to connect the people who need it. To see what else is happening, look to a 60-day pilot project headed to Sacramento in May:
Like Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncaldatold me a few weeks ago, this school year is just about getting through to summer. This summer is about making sure that no matter what school looks like next year, every student can participate.
Over the weekend, anti-social-distancing protesters faced off with health care workers in Colorado. Meanwhile, in Ohio, angry citizens tried to force their way into the statehouse.
What's not new about these protests is that they're mostly organized on Facebook. Some of the largest lockdown protest groups on the platform accumulated nearly 200,000 members by Sunday.
What is new? Facebook's taking a side.
It's removing content that promotes anti-quarantine protests using false information, such as saying social distancing doesn't stop the virus's spread.
Beyond the posts themselves, Facebook's looking primarily at the legality of the events they're organizing. It's taken down protest messages in California, New Jersey and Nebraska because of those states' current restrictions on gatherings.
Hours after news of Facebook's approach broke, groups braced for action from the company. In one public group called "Protest the lockdowns" a user wrote: "This group will soon be gone. Please add as many friends as you can. Where do we set up after this?"
If you can't see how AI makes its decisions, how can you trust the results?
The answer lies in Explainable AI or XAI.
Explainable models provide transparency — so you can stay accountable to customers, build trust, and make decisions with confidence.
One thing we've been tracking here at Protocol is all the ways groups like the CDC and WHO are working to share information — they're at the top of News Feeds and Twitter timelines, on Reddit pages and in search results everywhere.
Here's one you may not have predicted: The White House's Coronavirus Task Force now has its own smart TV app to teach people about social distancing and stream its daily news briefings. And it's catching on!
Lemp joked that he got into tech years ago because it wasn't about life-or-death — which raised the stakes for this project even more.
Kickstarter is planning layoffs, CEO Aziz Hasan told staff, after the number of projects on the platform dropped about 35% "with no clear sign of rebound." The company's already reduced pay and frozen hiring, but seems to think the worst is yet to come.
Tracy Chan is Twitch's new head of product and engineering for music. Chan was a product director at Spotify for four years before this, and described his new gig as "building a new world of live experiences for artists and fans." Concert livestreams are about to get a lot bigger, that's for sure.
Wayfair appointed Jim Miller as its new CTO. Miller's been in the role since August in an interim capacity, but now it's permanent. He comes with a long resume that includes Google, Amazon and Cisco.
Christian Klein is now SAP's only CEO, as Jennifer Morgan leaves the company after less than a year as its co-chief. No word on where Morgan is headed after 16 years at the company.
My work from home gear involves a lot of sweatpants and a comfy chair. For NASA's Matt Gildner, life's a little more complicated: He's at home, wearing 3D glasses, helping pilot the Curiosity rover around the surface of Mars. The Verge has a great story about Gildner and other NASA employees who have had to figure out how to continue to explore the universe while cooped up in their own homes. If you need me, I'll be rewatching "Gravity" on my phone, just to get a sense.
If you can't see how AI makes its decisions, how can you trust the results?
The answer lies in Explainable AI or XAI.
Explainable models provide transparency — so you can stay accountable to customers, build trust, and make decisions with confidence.
Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to me, david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Craig Newmark's name. Updated April 21.
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